Learn a Language on Your PC

Choosing the right language-learning software is a highly personal decision. You want a program that's right for your language education level, whether you're a total beginner or an experienced speaker in need of some brushing up. You also have to make sure that the language you want to study is available, which might be easy if it's Spanish or French but quite a different story if it's Cherokee. Do you need virtual tutoring? What about making sure you can study while driving? Do you need to master core grammar or just be able to speak some essential phrases for travel? Is the program you want in your price range?

There are so many excellent programs that can teach you a language, no matter what your needs or your budget. Sure, Google Translate is getting better all the time, but you just can't rely on it for everything! Here you'll find information about the ten best options for learning a language yourself, including the best free programs, the best for beginners, and the best for those who want to brush up their skills in a particular language.

The Best Free Language-Learning App

The best free language-learning app is Duolingo, hands down. Duolingo is available as both a web app and mobile app, and it works well whether you're a total beginner or have some experience with a language. If you've studied the language before, you can take a placement test in Duolingo so that you don't have to start at square one.

Duolingo has a wonderful interface that's easy to use. It also presents bite-size learning, making it a great tool for studying in short sessions. You can set a goal for your daily learning schedule, and some gamification aspects encourage you to hit that goal consistently. If you're motivated by leaderboards, points, and in-app rewards, Duolingo will keep you enticed. I highly recommend Duolingo either on its own or as a companion to another language-study program.

At present, Duolingo has programs in 15 languages: Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh. There are another four language-learning courses in beta (Hebrew, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese) and seven more that are "hatching," which means they are in development and not quite open for use: Czech, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Romanian, and Swahili. In other words, these languages will be available in the future.

The Best Paid Language-Learning Program

Among paid language-learning programs, Rosetta Stone Language Learning is hard to beat. Rosetta Stone has an excellent and stable system, and the experience of using it is smooth as glass. While some people may complain that the content is repetitive and a little dry, the deductive learning method it uses stands out as being much more memorable than most other programs that use, say, flashcards as their primary learning mechanic. I also like that the lessons are consistent in length, so you always know how much time you need to invest to complete a section.

Rosetta Stone keeps track of your progress, scores you as you complete exercises, and repeats important ideas at the right intervals to help you keep them fresh in your mind. It incorporates reading, writing, speaking, and listening equally, and it has optional e-tutoring sessions in which you can take a class with a real instructor via a web conferencing setup. Rosetta Stone is available for 28 languages, which are all listed in our review.

If you run a business with employees who regularly travel abroad and need some instruction in the languages of their destinations, you should definitely look into Rosetta Stone Catalyst for your company. Catalyst's interface will be familiar to anyone who's used the consumer edition of Rosetta Stone, but it also adds in-depth reporting on employee, departmental, or regional language learning progress for administrators. It isn't quite as polished as the consumer edition, but it's still an excellent tool for teaching the basics of a new language.

The Best Service for Brushing Up on a Language

If you already have some experience speaking a language and need to brush up, I recommend two services: Transparent Language Online and Yabla.

In my experience with the program, Transparent Language Online is hard. Or rather it's hard if you are a brand-new student to a language. And it's intense. For those reasons, it's really good for getting back into a language you've studied before. Transparent is similar to Rosetta Stone in that it covers all the major areas of learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Yabla is also very good for brushing up, but for a very different reason. Yabla has you watch videos in the language you're trying to learn, with subtitles available in both the foreign and English. After you watch a video, you replay it in segments and answer questions about the content and words used. As a beginner trying a new language, I found it overwhelming. When I tried it with a language I had already studied, it became challenging in a positive way.

Yabla's strong suit is that it lets you acclimate your ear to different voices (you can filter videos by accent or country of origin) speaking at a conversational pace. There are some videos that are slower and for beginners, but the real value of Yabla is in the intermediate and advanced videos.

The Best Programs for Learning On the Go

I've already mentioned that Duolingo offers bite-size learning, and given that its mobile apps have some offline functionality, it's an excellent program to use nearly anytime or anywhere.

Interactive mobile apps are great when you can spare the attention of your eyeballs and fingers, but what if your idea of learning on the go is to do it while driving or walking the dog? For that, there's Pimsleur. Pimsleur is somewhat old-school in the sense that the programs are almost entirely audio based, with only a few optional PDFs to help you with spelling and reading. When you buy Pimsleur, you get a batch of MP3 files that you can play on any device that supports them. (Speaking of old-school, there's also an option to buy discs.) Each lesson is about 30 minutes long, and the content is exceptional. There's a lot of listen-and-repeat content, but it's designed in a way that really makes you think and work hard to build your language skills.

The Best Program for When You Want a Teacher

Language-learning software programs are self-paced and sometimes even self-directed. The learning experience is highly independent. But when it comes to learning a new language, sometimes you need a human being to explain something to you.

Living Language is a program that includes e-tutoring in its package. In the e-tutoring sessions, you video-conference with an instructor. The audio is two-way, but the video is one-way—you can see the instructor, but he or she can't see you. What I like about Living Language's e-tutoring is that the instructors don't stick to a strict script. They have set material to cover, but they are free to answer questions, speak to you in English, and so forth. That's not the case with Rosetta Stone's e-tutoring, which is good, but a little too rigid for my taste.

Another great program with a more human touch is Fluenz. In Fluenz, you don't have a live conversation with a teacher, but you do have videos of a guide who takes you through the program. The guide explains concepts, breaks down pronunciation, and becomes a familiar face on your learning journey.

The Best Services for Hard-to-Find Languages

Most language-learning programs for speakers of English can teach you Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. What do you do, then, if you need to learn Urdu, Igbo, or Ojibwe?

The three programs most likely to have a hard-to-find language are Transparent Language Online, Pimsleur, and Mango Languages (which didn't quite make the cut for this "best of" list). Transparent Language Online has programs for more than 100 languages. Some of those programs are short at the moment, but the company is busy adding to them. Pimsleur has around 50 languages in its catalog, and a few of them are not offered by Transparent. Finally, Mango Languages is an option if you're stuck. It's not my favorite program, but it may be the only option if the language you need is impossible to find elsewhere.

Use Quizlet for Memorization

If you're just looking to quiz yourself on vocabulary, you can do that for free with Quizlet, an excellent service that focuses squarely on rote learning. That might sound deadly dull, but Quizlet actually offers a bunch of tools to mix up the memorization, ranging from flashcards to fill-in-the-blanks questions, and even a few game modes. The tools are nicely animated, and the app offers speech-to-text features for pronunciation help, too.

The result is a surprisingly engaging tool that is a good adjunct for any language-learning course. You can create your own study set, adding to it as new words pop up, or you can choose from the millions of user-generated sets out there. While languages make up just a fraction of the premade sets, a quick look shows that there are plenty of sets available for Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish and many other languages.

Get Talking!

Most software-based language programs will help you learn a base of vocabulary and grammar, but they won't turn you into a fluent speaker. For that, you need to practice with other human beings and come up with things you genuinely want to say, rather than words that an app is prompting you to learn. Using the apps listed below can teach you a lot, though, so develop a base knowledge first with them and then go out and use your skills in the real world. If one of the apps sounds good to you, you can click the links and read the full review for a deeper dive.

Bottom Line: Learning a language with Fluenz feels more like being in a classroom than is the case with most language-learning software. It's an excellent app, but it's expensive and only offers a few la...

Bottom Line: Rocket Languages dishes up enough content to keep you busy for years for a reasonable price. The user experience could use some additional polishing, but it's an excellent program overall.�

Bottom Line: Pimsleur is one of the most accurate and effective programs for learning to speak and understand a new language. It won't teach you reading or writing, but this audio-intensive program has a...

Bottom Line: Yabla helps language students strengthen their listening skills with hundreds of short videos on a wide variety of topics, but it lacks the tools and structure most language-learning service...

Bottom Line: Offering instruction in 101 languages, Transparent Language Online is a top language-learning program for self-directed learners. It's a wonderful alternative to Rosetta Stone for those who ...

Before joining PCMag.com, she was senior editor at the Association for Computing Machinery, a non-profit membership organization for computer scientists and students. She also spent five years as a writer and managing editor of Game Developer magazine, ... See Full Bio